Zee's 'India's Best' executes on-ground rounds successfully

Zee TV's India's Best-Cinestars Ki Khoj, the nationwide talent hunt is successfully managing its on ground activities in various cities. The rounds, which began on May 21 2004, are expected to wrap in totality by June 11, 2004. Following this, the channel has another set of activities that will include the grooming of its finalists. The channel has captured each of these activities. These will be developed into 16 episodes, which will be aired on Zee TV in August 2004.

The event was carried out in five phases. Each phase was inclusive of four cities. Of these 16 cities are completed and the final four cities are on the verge of completion. Four finalists from each city have been roped in, giving the channel a total of 80 participants.

These participants are then being called to Mumbai for a grooming session. Here again, the activities are planned to cut down the number of participants to 32, who will then be included in a talent show on the channel. The talent show will finally culminate to two winners, who then have the chance to work in two movies produced by Zee TV itself. Both these movies will incur a cost of Rs 10 crore each. The channel's officials claim that the total investment that it has made in the ground activities, the grooming session, developing the television properties and including the movies too is at Rs 100 crore.

Looking at the activities of some of the major cities, Mumbai saw its share of action and more. Three days of screening was conducted by jury comprising of photographer Gautam Rajadhyaksha, director Mahesh Manjrekar, Gulshan Grover and producer Sajid Nadiadwala. The winners were judged after qualifying in the series of five rounds.

Sunil Khanna, President Zee TV, expresses, "We received amazing response from Mumbai. It has been a wonderful experience and the people of Mumbai have lived up to their reputation of being bright and vibrant. India's Best witnessed large number of participants from this Bollywood City and it was an enthralling experience. We look forward to a similar response from every city that is holding auditions."

Delhi too wasn't far behind. In fact, the capital witnessed enough action to reschedule the event. Ashish Kaul, Vice President, Corporate Brand Development, Essel Group informs directly from the venue, "We have been completely overwhelmed by the humungous response from the people of Delhi. Till now we in other cities we had had close to 4000 to 5000 participants coming for the auditions but here the numbers went far beyond. Considering the same the venue of auditions is shifted."

With the completion of New Delhi, Rajkot, Varanasi and Kolhapur, the on ground activity of the event will culminate. More than 8 lakh entries have been received for India's Best Cinestars Ki Khoj till date.